THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING THINGS OR EVEN SAYING THEM

David Miller, a professor at one time at Pacifica Graduate Institute, noted that as soon as one says something, the opposite as well is instantly "true." This made much sense to me for I had always been aware that when I made a statement, it always was inherently very limited and even inherently quite "wrong" because it was most "decided." In other words, there were all the things about what I said that I didn't say, which made is therefore almost a false statement because it wasn't totally complete and could never be totally complete. Obviously, this doesn't apply to measureable things, such as one's weight or height, the color of one's eyes, whether or not one went to work today, or the horsepower of the engine in my car. Though one could accurately say that there are many other elements regarding me or my car that have not been mentioned. However, I think I'm referring to what one says about other things, like, for instance, the essay I wrote here yesterday. When one speaks of "large ideas" or concepts, how much does one assume the reader can understand? And how much does one assume one's self understands? As I speak, for instance, whole new thoughts and new directions and horizons of thought rise up into my mind, as it were. Some of them I follow, I go with, and others I leave behind and do not speak or write them. There is so much that is unsaid; it is far, far more than is said. Wittgenstein noted in the introduction of one of his books that what was far more important, in fact, most important about his book, was not what he said but rather what he didn't say. That resonates with me very much.

I have often thought that the most accurate communication we can do is to say or write absolutely nothing--simply because whatever comes out of our mouth or is written down is instantaneously erroneous; it hasn't been presented in its fullness but rather only in its partialness. I am forever having to explain myself so that others might possibly be able to understand me. My focus of my thought is usually rather abstract and obscure and of little interest to most people, and what I say seems clear enough to me. However, I have been told that I speak and write as though I were talking to myself rather than others, that my writing is "dense and intense" and can be hard to follow and understand. Part of it is that what's on my mind is simply not on other people's minds. It may have been Oscar Wilde who said something like: Those who keep their own company often fall in with the wrong crowd. My "business card" shows my name and then right after it, "Soliloquist." One who talks to himself or herself. I like that but it can create too many fawning admirers who aren't there. And then, there is also the fact that, though I write to others, I am attempting to understand myself in and through the process. I believe that writers tell their stories to themselves foremost. Nietzsche said that philosophers all present their own philosophies of life in the hope that others might agree and thus validate the philosopher's existence and reality. 

FAILURE OF MAGIC (RELIGION) AND TECHNOLOGY (SCIENCE) IN KNOWING OURSELVES

Religion with its magic and miracle and Science with its technology and progress has not brought us closer to who we are as beings of many worlds but, rather, has distanced us severely from ourselves. Religion ruled and failed, since it was more interested in extending itself than whatever truth it may have possessed and had lost over time through its own corruption and dogma to be imposed upon the faithful. Science and its technology arose as a force in the period of the Enlightenment, bringing the antithesis of religious belief and spirituality, and the truth of the physical world, as if that were all. It had the effect of mechanizing the spirit so that we might see ourselves as organic, fleshy, machines.

It would seem at this point that humans have so identified themselves as such that they believe they will progress quite well as cyborgs, ultimately with all the necessary apps implanted in their brains at birth, and all the necessary tools to keep their bodies intact and healthy and alive for at least hundreds of years. It seems that humans at this point would opt for an existence free of "difficult personal choices," now seen in terms of obsolete "existential dilemmas." One's life will be pleasantly planned out for him or her. In a sense it already is and has been since the beginning: one is born into a social, cultural, familial process that is already churning through its endless cycles. However, now there is still or most recently a sense of personal choice, which is real for those who come to make it as such, and not real for those who only make wishes or who are literally trapped in their lives. Many are either literally or psychological already quite imprisoned, if not enslaved, in the reality they have fashioned for themselves and/or has been fashioned for them by culture, society, and family. We are born into mindsets and their respective realities on all of those levels. And this must first be realized if we are to be able to create in any way something different for ourselves.

Both religion and technology have and do strongly form and continuously inform us. For many, religion as already come and dominated but has lost its hold to technology, which now controls us and with which we now identify as literally an integral part of our own being. We allow it to act for us and to even think for us. Technology is now the body-snatcher; it is the alien that now possesses us. We will not think to question it or ourselves regarding it. We give up our own particular existences in order that we might be able to think like it, becoming part and parcel of its matrix, the web itself. We learn to ably think it and speak it. We are willing to give up what has become the trifle of the human soul in exchange for the endless benefits of being part of the One Mind. It's a very religious and technological attainment for us, but spirit and matter are not joined; spirit becomes as matter and is brought down to the darkness of matter. Spirit is mechanized and put to use like a robot.

One may ask, "So why is this such a problem? So what if I become an efficient thinking, feeling machine?" The problem is that this is not what you are. You are not a machine. You must make existential choices. You have a soul, as it were. There is something within you that is far greater than the machine-world, than the physical world. If you cannot attain contact with that vital element of yourself, you will find yourself very lost and confused when you finally leave the body. Even if there is no afterlife at all and there is not soul to go anywhere, then whatever energy of awareness or consciousness that was you may then be added the the "pool" of all energy. If you have allowed yourself to become identified with only the physical, the mechanical, what will happen to the collective level of energy? Will you be one more monkey-wrench thrown into it? But that's a moot point; nobody particularly thinks about that, or cares.

If one is so identified with themselves as other-than-human, and other-than-spirit, what happens when one is plunged into a world that is not human but of the spirit? If one has no references, just what does one do? What do you do? Or, put differently, what if you suddenly discover that there is no you, but all you know is you? I think it is wiser to prepare for this perhaps ultimate reality. If you end when life ends and there is simply no more consciousness, that's fine and well. But, you must ask, "What if I am thrust into a totally different reality, one that I had every opportunity to seek out, but, given the conveniences of technology (or religion, for that matter), didn't? What happens then?"

The main feature in Dante's Divine Comedy is, to my mind, that those who are suffering grievously in Hell are totally unaware that they are in Hell; they believe they are still alives and living their lives from day to day. That is most interesting. To not even know but to live hellish lives over and over in eternity. Now, of course, that's just a story, but I find it to be philosophically and psychologically quite credible, if not inevitable. For this reason in itself, we are destined to inquire within ourselves to find that which is beyond ourself and our world.

BRIEF WORDS RE FOCUS

I realize that speaking of "fragments" and the "fallacy of reality," in itself becomes a distraction and a kind of abstraction that may effectively remove one from the matter at hand, whatever that may be. Claiming that "it's not supposed to make sense" does not remove one from being in the moment and responding as well as possible.

Not so long ago, a few years, I was obsessed with "what happens when I die." I wrote a number of essays based in my own "education" regarding death, which made some kind of sense and which I was willing to take seriously at that point, having taken such perspectives even more seriously and with pronounced belief prior to that time. But then, as I could accept that I just didn't know for sure, I stopped perseverating over what happens at death. 

I'll return to this in due time.

A PREFERENCE FOR IRONY

So that which we call "true" is not really so true after all. Rather, it is a construct of our own making, of which we are generally not aware at all, since it is a social construct that predates us probably by generations. And so, "tradition" becomes "truth" because it has been around for so long as to be believed as such. 

So if that which is "true" is not necessarily so at all, and one was persistently aware of this, a sense of irony would persist, would necessarily have to persist within one's mind. This is not really a "preference"; it is a reality: the reality of appearances and of beliefs held. Such reality would be present to one who understood this "transparency" as perpetual fallacy that reinstates and recreates itself. 

And this is precisely why I changed the name of this blog to "fragments." Everything comes to us in fragments, be it sensory, emotional, or mental. It comes not in wholes. We are so trained that we give our fragmentary existence meaning by interpreting all these fragments, depending also on our state of body, emotion, and mind. We believe that we understand and comprehend and, in such belief, "create" ourselves, our lives and our world. This is how it is and probably how it must be--at least until we are able to move out from under such beliefs about ourselves.

Sometimes I feel very strange and awkward in the flesh, in this human body. It feels as if this is not my normal form. I can appreciate all the at least billions of years it took to evolve it to its present form, but I also feel as if I've been rather recently plopped into this human form, which is akin to an organic, fleshy machine, though I mean no denigration in saying that. It is a quite phenomenal organism, probably the most phenomenal organism of its kind. Yet I find it strange and even awkward or ponderous that I have to convey thoughts by writing words by typing with my hands, taking words "from my mind," in a body I must work at to have it survive by feeding it, cleaning it, cleansing it--an animal flesh body from the planet Earth. To most people what I say here would sound crazy, much like some arrogant alien. I thought, while walking this morning, how strange that these arms hang at my sides now, and that my eyes and face communicate to other people without saying a word. Sometimes I find that I know people's thoughts, and especially their emotions. It's not that try or that I'm so interested; it's just that I do, that's all. Nor is it that I am aloof or antisocial; I'm actually quite friendly and take an actual interest in others: I want them to feel good and be well, and I am heartened when this is so. But even if people did know their own minds, which they don't for the most part, they are not much supposed to actually reveal how it is for them; such honesty is disquieting and disruptive to the "flow" of society. But this leads me back once more to the notion that existence is fragmentary and that our attempts to interpret and make sense of ourselves and our lives and the world is fraught with inaccuracy and fallacy.

HOLDING THE AWARENESS

There is an awareness which I call "the awareness" which, I believe, exists within each of us. Most of us are generally unaware of it and remain enmeshed and occupied by our thoughts and our feelings and our sensations. I hate waiting in lines and being stuck in traffic. Right in the midst of my irritable and impatient thoughts and feelings, "the awareness" comes into my mind, not as a thought or feeling, but as a sense of higher or greater being, as though I am above all the drama unfolding below, which includes myself in all my irritation and identity with myself as one who must wait in line and thus waste my very existence in the physical world in a physical body. This is how my thoughts go. But "the awareness" puts me in a state that might be described as "a sense of being it all," in which my definition of "myself" expands beyond any sense of individual or separate self. It is simply a different state of being in which "I" am not at the center of attention or awareness. It's not accompanied by any particular feelings of elation, though there is a sense of no tension held in place with stressed thoughts and feelings.
      This "awareness" does "come upon" me, yes, but I also realize that it is always present and that I am perfectly able to "go there" or "let it in" whenever I want to. I also notice that sometimes I don't want to have it; that the distraction of the moment, of the deceit, of the pleasure, perhaps even of the pain, of the "lower" existence, is something I prefer, be it out of habit, comfort, pleasure, which are all chemical, physical "highs." A religious person might say, "The devil made me do it," and be quite accurate in a sense.
"The awareness" does have religious overtones; one could easily call it "the mind of God," though I prefer keeping it, to me, real, and much simpler; "God" gets too much credit and too much blame; let us look at ourselves squarely and honestly. Though I see that the notion of "God" covers all that area of which we are unconscious, which is of "mystery" (which leads to another discussion another time) and therefore fulfills a major function of life.
     We have the capacity to call "the awareness," once consciously experienced, into our minds, our thoughts again and again. It is a state of being that encompasses what we see as ourselves and others and, really, everything. Imagine how life could be, how the world itself could be, if people were aware that they could participate in the level of existence whenever they chose. We would no longer be at the mercy of our fears and would even be able to transcend ourselves while still being able to be ourselves living our lives.

BEING THROUGHOUT HISTORY

One thing I am aware of is that I have lived numerous lives throughout history, a number of which I do remember though not completely. There are some dates, some names, some vivid memories, some of which have even been corroborated, though I do not say this to prove anything to be true, but to imply that they were in fact real and that I have in fact experienced myriad lives, and not only earthly ones.

When I read history my memory is stirred if I happened to be in that moment, that time, that place. It is as though I not only knew some of these people but that I was one of them. One of my lives is known in history, the many others are not. I have remembered details in some instances that are most defining. To realize that I have been present in this way throughout human history does not give insight so much as it does compassion for the human condition itself. To be succinct, I have traveled the path of a Roman centurian who escorted Jesus Christ to Pontius Pilate to a rabbi at Treblinka. We have been there and back and have close memories that can only be conveyed as stories.

THE PROBLEM IS...

For a while now I have been gathering and organizing and attempting to edit writing I have done over the last twenty years or so which amounts to literally thousands of pages for the purpose of writing and publishing a book. But the problem is that I am used to writing every day, as if I am drawing up water from a very deep well that I use to quench my thirst. As interesting or as quenching my earlier writing may be or have been for me, such memories or old creations do not quench my need to draw from this deep well.

So I am compelled to say so here and now. The book needs to be organized, edited and published, but I am already stuck on just what of my journal entries I want to include. I tend to write personally within a philosophical context, probably so that I am able to observe who it is that is actually writing and what he is actually saying. I don't write to entertain; I write to share something of value, something that adds to one's understanding and comprehension not only of oneself but of oneself in one's life and in the world. I don't know exactly how or why but what I write needs to be written and not just for my own fulfillment and/or expression. 

If one descends into a deep cavern full of treasure everywhere but which can only be transformed into words, into thoughts, one desires to take it with him or her back to the surface. But that's quite an inadequate metaphor. If one eats of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, one then understands something of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and what that means. Such understanding is as a treasure to be shared to the good of all. I seem to be saying that I have eaten of this tree and have attained some kind of knowledge not known in general. I have but I don't know exactly what it is. It is in the telling of the story that it is imparted to those who are interested and able to listen. It has to be made available. It is very difficult and tiring to have to decipher one's own wisdom since it does not arise out of oneself but rather through oneself. Such wisdom may be called "spiritual" but it is not limited to that nor is it specifically religious at all.